Balthasar - Christ wholly universal and wholly concrete, is simultaneously in every human situation

Humanly speaking, the Lord is astounding because he displays a purely divine quality—that of being at once wholly universal and wholly concrete—now within the human reality. Thus did he truly become all things to all men, and he simultaneously stands on every level of human experience and is to be found in every human situation, even in those that fully contradict and exclude one another. And yet, in so doing, he does not cease being wholly human. And he gives his holy ones a participation even in this quality. 

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (1953), chapter titled Christ

Balthasar - “Omnitemporality” of Christ - every moment of His human life is eternal

Every moment of Jesus’ life has an eternal meaning: it is taken up into his eternity and represents not only his abiding in his Mother’s womb but also his dying on the Cross and his Resurrection. He is now, simultaneously, everything that he could then be only within temporal succession. This is why Mary, too, eternally remains in the situation of the Pregnant Woman—like the envelopment through which alone Christ operates—and also in the situation of the Woman Giving Birth and of the Mediatrix of Graces. In this form of Christ’s “omnitemporality”, we can see something of our own form of existence in eternity.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (1953), chapter titled Christ

Balthasar - Jesus' life and sufferings are a direct revelation of the interior life and intentions of God

All external scenes of Jesus’ life and sufferings are to be understood as a direct revelation of the interior life and intentions of God. This is the fundamental meaning of biblical symbolism and allegory, without which the whole gospel remains nothing but superficial moralism. Thus, for instance, Jesus’ silence before Caiaphas, the Ecce Homo episode with Pilate, the figure of the Lord covered with the cloak and flogged, his nailing to the Cross, the piercing of his Heart, his words on the Cross, and so on. All of this is a direct portrayal and exegesis of God (John 1:18), accessible to the senses.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (1953), chapter titled Christ

Balthasar - All human life illumined by the Sacred Humanity of Christ

“There is no moment, there is no place, there is no circumstance that is not illumined either by the operation or by the suspension of some grace or admirable effect that the humanity of Jesus was intended to bear within itself.”    [quotation from Pierre de Bérulle] 

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (1953), chapter titled Christ

Balthasar - All Christ's actions in His humanity are signs of spiritual realities

We cannot look directly at Christ any more than we can look directly at the sun. He has to be “interpreted”. His works, words, miracles are one and all signs that point to something: they do not signify only themselves. They possess an unbounded depth into which they attract and invite us. But we do not find the truth behind them, at a second, purely spiritual level (as the Fathers often thought: that was the eggshell of their Platonism). Rather (and the Fathers affirmed this as well): the Word became Flesh, the eternal Meaning has become incarnate within the temporal symbol. What is signified must be sought within the sign itself, the “moral” within the history, the God within the Man. No one shall ever leave Christ’s humanity behind as obsolete instrument.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (1953), chapter titled Christ